General – DolWin5
Seatrium New Energy (Singapore) and Aibel (Norway) have filed arbitration proceedings in connection with a partnership to deliver the TenneT 900MW DolWin5 (Dolwin Epsilon) HVDC converter platform in the German North Sea.
Both companies have filed cases with the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC Arbitration Institute)
According to Seatrium, the proceedings arise from ‘differences’ between both companies under the consortium agreement related to a ‘failure to achieve timely design freeze with multiple changes’ to the platform.
“Parties are asserting claims against each other under the Consortium Agreement for breaches relating to direct scopes of work and in respect of disagreements relating to the allocation of scope of responsibilities of the parties,” the company stated.
Both companies are also disputing the distribution of revenue and costs incurred relating to the joint scope of the Project.
“In respect of direct scopes of work, SNE and Aibel have made demands against each other for sums in the region of EUR180 million and EUR113 million respectively.”
Seatrium said it is contesting the claims.
Aibel said the two companies ‘experienced challenges and disagreements in how responsibilities and expenses were shared during the joint delivery’.
Aibel’s claims are based on additional work and costs incurred by it to complete the project in line with the customer’s requirements, a statement added.
As the dispute has reached a deadlock at the consortium level, the matter now moves into formal arbitration. This is a standard and contractually defined mechanism for resolving disagreements between the partners.
Aibel will continue to follow the established procedures and will address the claims through the arbitration process and remains committed to the DolWin 5 project and to supporting its progress toward final completion.
The DolWin5 HVDC converter platform is designed to connect Ørsted’s Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm to the mainland grid.
